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The court heard Harris used a cigarette lighter to set fire to a cupboard full of towels and sheets after he sneaked into the hotel around 2am after drinking in a pub and a nightclub.

Prosecutor Michael Jones said: "It was a hotel on the seafront during the summer at the height of tourist season. He must have known there were a large number of guests at the hotel at the time and were asleep.

Damion Harris was caught on CCTV (Image: PA/CPS)

"He carried out a clearly deliberate and obviously dangerous act. It was likely to result in serious injury or death and that is indeed what occurred."

Harris was caught on CCTV removing a fire extinguisher from a wall in the reception area and hiding it on an upper level before returning downstairs to set a pair of net curtains on fire.

The scene of the fire (Image: Rose Voon Photography)

The flames on the curtains went out, but Harris entered the hotel's basement and set fire to a cupboard containing linen before making his escape.

The court heard the the fire spread upwards and thick smoke woke up a number of the guests, including Mr Simnett, 42, who was on a family holiday with partner Caroline Latham and their two young boys.

Juozas Tunaitis was the only person killed in the blaze (Image: PA/CPS)

The family escaped to the roof after Miss Latham made a 999 call to the fire service, which was played in court.

On it, Miss Latham is heard saying she has two children aged four and five and says: "We've tried to get down the stairs but we can't. There's thick smoke."

Miss Latham was heard telling her sons, "hold hands, boys, stay together", after they were lifted by their father to the hotel roof, and then instructed them to recite their five times table to distract them after their father slipped and fell.

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Mr Simnett landed on a handrail, which broke his fall some 12 to 14 feet above ground level.

He suffered fractures to his vertebrae, his collar bone and his sternum, as well as seven broken ribs and a broken right arm which has left him without sensation in some fingers.

Miss Latham and her two children were helped down from the roof by firefighters using a cherry picker.

Mr Tunaitis, the only person to die in the fire, was seen poking his head from his room's window on the second floor by his three colleagues after they managed to escape their own rooms into the street.

Emergency services in Aberystwyth (Image: Robert Parry-Jones)

Fellow contractor Zydruna Sedys said he tried to wake up Mr Tunaitis but failed to get him out before he was forced to escape the building by sliding down a white support structure from a balcony.

He told police he shouted to Mr Tunaitis in Lithuanian to jump down from a balcony, but never saw him again after police moved him and others away from the scene.

Mr Tunaitis was found on September 10 by a forensic archaeologist, but his remains were so badly damaged he could not be identified until 16 weeks later on November 15.

Emergency services at the scene of the fire (Image: Robert Parry-Jones)

A post-mortem examination could not determine whether he died from smoke inhalation or directly from the fire.

Shortly after the fire, Harris was found by a policeman slumped in the street with his T-shirt over his head and was described as "heavily intoxicated" before he walked home.

Harris was later identified using CCTV and was arrested on suspicion of arson.

He denied to police that he had ever entered the hotel, before saying he had been threatened by an unknown man to set the hotel on fire or else his family would be harmed.